May 19, 2008

  • Has it really been that long?

    Who remembers 1998?  Who remembers what happened in 1998?  Anybody remember the Good Friday talks?  No.  The beginning of the Pokemon craze that exists to this day?  No.  The beginning of the last season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?  No.  Brazil getting their asses handed to them by France 3-0 in the World Cup Finals?  No.  How about the launch of a device called the MPMan F10?  No.  Well, all you iPod and Zune users should be thankful for it.  The MPMan F10 was the first commercially sold MP3 player.  Released several months before the Diamond Rio PMP300, it had 32 MB of memory.  32 MB, was enough to hold eight to ten songs (back then the ability to alter the bit rate wasn't quite improved yet).  It linked to a computer via a serial port (no such thing as USB for PC's back then).

    When it was first released, I actually considered buying one.  That is until the Diamond released the Rio.  I considered buying that one as well.  However, before I could gather together the $250 (that was a lot back then for a college freshman) needed to make a purchase; Diamond got sued by the RIAA.  Though the battle was short lived, it put a damper on my desire to own one.  What did I do instead?  I bought a MiniDisc Player.  Man was I stupid.  I should have bought the Rio. 

    Well, let's wish the MP3 player a Happy Birthday.

Comments (3)

  • i thought it was german, not flemish. who knew? apparently not me.

    i secretly enjoy hating mariah carey. that's it, man. no conspiracy theory here...

  • mp3 player! WOO!

    sometimes a lawsuit (or threat of) or the cost to litigate one is enough to cause the company to back off.

    even just a few years ago, people were hanging tight to their mini disc players.

    I remember in 2001, I got a Samsung Uproar. the world's first mp3 phone (released a year prior to mixed results). 64mb MP3 phone. I loved that little thing but the accompanying remote was a bit fragile and fell apart too easily. you could listen with a regular 3.5mm jack earphone but that took away from the phone answering capability.

    I still buy cds (used) so I usually find myself storing most of my music on a hard drive and then constantly shuffling songs in and out of a 1 gig flash mp3 player. i still like that cd quality sound so I still play off the cd in the car or rip at a higher rate even though it takes up more space.

    we've come a long way in 10 years! the rage then was taking the mp3s and burning mix cds. now everyone just bypasses that by plugging the ipod/mp3 player to an auxiliary out and working off playlists. much easier and a time saver

  • Happy Birthday MP3 player.  I still don't own one of you yet!  Maybe soon.

Comments are closed.

Post a Comment